Dancing Dolphins
by Absol Master
Summary: Giftfic. Happy Birthday, CrapPishh. ::And as I stand here, the past and the present are blurring. Time is no longer bounded by divisions--and those days are returning again. But somehow, I cannot believe them anymore.::


I am not returning. Not yet, anyway. I just had to post my birthday dedication to CrapPishh.

This isn't exactly how I planned for it to turn out. Neither is it very much good. But I did work hard on this, and I hope that it will be enjoyed, no matter how badly-written. A little piece of my heart went intof writing this.

* * *

**Dedicated to CrapPishh. Happy Birthday!**

* * *

_D a n c i n g **D o l p h i n s**_

_The ringing...the distant ringing..._

I blink the evening light away, at the shimmer of a whisper from the past. Even as I watch, the house of the present fades, the dim orange sky and the reflective golden windows blurring beyond a veil of initial forgetting. Then the home of _now _has vanished, and the past rises to the surface, amidst the waves of sky.

* * *

Suddenly the eras are no longer divided. I see myself running in a lush, sunlit garden, chasing my sisters cat with a silly laugh on my lips. I can see the explosions of color that adorn the leaves, the faces of the sunrise and spring smiling like innocent children upon the world.

The grass is heavenly sweet. I can feel them prickling on my arms, but the coolness that surrounds me floods the doubt away. The gentle clouds stroll past like grazing sheep. How I love the ringing of the wind!

_Such blissit seems so impossible now. These are things I can only imagine now, things I forgot, brought back by looking upon this world._

Again the images whirl away, a blur of petals andf butterflies. I am at the window now, watching through the grills as the storm clouds thicken before the austere sun. And the sweet ringing prances lightly across the edges of my hearing, echoing deep in the depths of my heart, from the chiming ornament that I am tying to the window with cord.

We bought it at the Henesys marketplace—it seems just a moment ago that we stood in the sunny marketplace and the glittering wind chimes and its crystal dolphins drew my fascinated eye. Now my hands tie it to the grills of the second level window in the storm wind, jangling clumsily. The clouds are darkening, the winds sweeping up around me.

I love the way the dolphins dance, endlessly, when the wind blows. Such a childish love of mine. Will they ever stop dancing?

Heedless, it blurs away—this summer rain in a wash of cool misty drops, crystals suspended in time, brushed away by remembrance. And here the autumn breezes are rustling through our door, the gentle singing of the half-decade-old wind ornament sifting through the corridors in song. I am gazing down at my dagger, at the path I chose to take.

_Was it around then that I began to rebel? The guild of thieves I joined—were the things they taught me anything but trustable? They told me that I could do so much. They told me to taste the sweetness of freedom. They said it was the most beautiful thing in the world._

_Was it wrong when I began to run away at night, then, to join my friends in the perilous flights under the moon?_

The dagger—it is bloodstained. I have not told my parents,for the whispering wind chimes bid me keep it a secret.

In that blade, I can see explosions; I can hear cackles of delight. In that metal echo all the evils we did, together—

_Was it wrong? Even then, I didnt know. I thought nothing of it. Exploding the homes of the innocent for enjoyment—wasnt my joy enough to justify it?_

My parents do not see the thoughts flowing on in my eyes. Only the soft chimes from the dolphins of the old window keep me company now, the sad winds that rush the barricades of silence.

There it is again, the shifting of times. The scarlet shadows are blown into the indistinct distance, to land in the frigid white winter. I can still smell the fresh ice; feel the coldness biting my fingers. And I can see the door vanishing from my view, to be engulfed in shining snow.

These tears—they have been there since I began to run. I can still see glass shattering at my hands, hear my demonic screams—the reprimanding voice of the Goddess, echoing in the words of my mother. This is what I have become, under the influence of the world.  
Theft. Murder. Only now do I come to realize that the line between right and wrong is not clear at all.

It seems almost too unreal, to be reliving that moment of imbalance. I don't want to stay there anymore, to hear the dolphins' song, my mother's voice. Only my guild will accept me now. Only they will take in an innocent murderess. Through my tears, I race into the cold sky.

Hah. I laugh when I think about my fury now. It seems so absurd, the way I felt that hurt all the way through my soul, as I fled. I now see the folly in hating my home, in wanting to return to my guild.

As I approach, I suddenly make out the shapes of the empty windows. The headquarters are abandoned, everyone gone. How it crushes my heart, the shards it already is—for they forgot me. Left without me.

Anger sweeps me there and then—my tears fall, cutting my heart deep, as I run from the shadow.

I spend a year away, running from one place to another, killing and begging for money. I try to forget my old home, and live a new life I create for myself.

But somehow—somehow, it just clings there.

_Every night, I dreamt of warmth and comfort. Gradually, it began to hurt. I thought the pain was silly at that time—but it grew to tear me, more than injury and self-pity itself. It grew into a torture, this longing for my home._

* * *

I blink once more. The memories suddenly rush away, the images flickering and going out.

And so, I am here.

Come home—that is what I did. I came home to reconcile myself, perhaps start over with my family. I came home to write our story again, without any slashes of pain or distance between us. And so I came again, ready to apologise, ready to redeem myself—

But _this _is what I came home to.

The windows are empty and shattered, bars bent. The wall is caved in and layered with soot, the once-immaculate outline of my home marred. The garden is nothing but a patch of blackened earth; the gate is rusty and charred, one side unhinged.

Some time while I was gone, _they_ finally chose my old home. _They_ blew it up with a Meso Explosion. And _they, _I imagine, were laughing like madmen as they did the merciless deed, tore down my home and family with a single unstoppable blast of flame. My own lawless guild.

A sigh comes to my lips. There is no pain, no. Only emptiness, weaving itself, in between the _then _and the _now_.

Carefully, I step out onto the bare earth, my footsteps magnified by the echoes. The stones, the earth, the sky, they are all blank and torn. There is nothing left—no voices beyond the windows. No shouts, no laughter, no whispering weeping.

The memories—I can see them fluttering gently around the edges of the stone, peering timidly from behind the ruins every now and then, carrying their every second with them wherever they go. They are filled with colour and laughter, filled with something that I can no longer understand, nor believe.

Are they even real, those strange things that I seem to remember? Are they real memories, or are they fragments of a dystopic dream?

Is it possible that once, in the distant past, I was happy?

The wind is rising around me, solemn, rustling voices. Somewhere deep in the ruined relics, I hear a lonely, eerie chime. A haunting crystalline sound that echoes against the broken stonesgentle and hollow, almost nonexistent.

I look up at the dented grills of the window. And there, glittering in the faint sun, the crystal dolphins are still dancing carelessly on the wind.

* * *

I had a wind chime just like that. It was beautiful. Does anyone else here like the sound of wind chimes


End file.
